Project

The aim of this project is to uncover dissonant voices, alternative perspectives, new narratives of transnational literary connections and publishing networks in the Irish fin de siècle. The life and writing of Dublin-born but Paris-based writer, Hannah Lynch (1859-1904) in the contexts of the dominant debates of the period: nationalism, imperialism, women and education, the Irish Literary Revival, Decadence, and the New Woman, provides an ideal lens for this study. Lynch’s “Europeanized perspective”, evident in all of her work, offers a broader picture of life and writing in Ireland at the fin de siècle than “the Irish grand narrative” has allowed, in particular the grand narrative of the Irish Literary Revival. While her literary career intersected with some of the major Irish writers of the period, such as W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde and George Moore, her work also opened up dialogues with a diversity of English and European writers. She was published alongside Joseph Conrad in
Blackwood's magazine and she frequented literary salons attended by Walter Pater, Henry James and Marcel Proust. Her cosmopolitan and feminist connections established in London and Paris through the English writers Mabel and Mary Robinson and the French historian and biographer, Cécile Vincens (Arvède Barine), for example, shaped her writing, specifically in relation to the discourses of gender and national identity. Through new and original archival excavation and critical analysis of hitherto unstudied texts, the aim is to recover a distinctly different narrative of Ireland and late-nineteenth-century writing, revealing fresh avenues of critical enquiry into late-nineteenth-century Irish women’s writing and its European contexts. Exposing hidden female networks and connections, neglected literary and critical voices, narratives and counter-narratives, will be a major outcome of the project and base for further research. It will also inform the overall shape and substance of the study.